Marginal Christianity

Ch.11: The Bible is Important The Bible plays a vital role in God’s Subversive Counter-Revolutionary Movement. Every movement, especially a “great campaign of sabotage” (C. S. Lewis) needs a Field Guide, and that, I suggest, is how, in most respects, the Bible functions for God’s people. The respect in which the Bible is unlike a Field Guide, however, is the most important. It serves as a sacrament, sign, and servant of God’s SCRM. The Bible as the Living Word of God The SCRM God communicates himself and his will and way for us in the Bible. “Jesus Christ as he is attested in Holy Scripture is the one Word of God whom we have to hear, and whom we have to trust and obey in life and in death.” [1] So claims the remarkable Theological Declaration of Barmen written by the Confessing Church as a witness against the Nazi regime in Germany in 1934. “As he is attested in Holy Scripture” – the Jesus we find in the pages of the New Testament witnesses to the living Word o...

The Sacraments are Boring and Irrelevant           The sacraments for us Protestants number two: Baptism and Eucharist or Communion or the Lord’s Supper. In all honesty, these rituals hold little purchase on our hearts and minds these days. Baptism, for those churches that baptism infants, is often little more than pious baby worship, and hence, idolatrous. And most of us have little idea of what the Eucharist is about. And often the little we do know is that it’s somber and sorrowful, with little scraps or cubes or wafers of bread and a thimble full of juice or wine passing for a “feast,” supposedly re-enacting the Last Supper, and it makes us late to the restaurant after worship for Sunday lunch.           There’s got to be more to them than that, though. Isn’t there? What happens when we celebrate them. Are they mere symbols of something else? That’s a common misconception needs to be deb...

1.     The Book The Bible plays a vital role in God’s SCRM. Every movement, especially a “great campaign of sabotage,” needs a Field Manual of Operations, and that, I suggest, is how, in most respects, the Bible functions for God’s people. The respect in the Bible is unlike a Field Manual of Operations, however, is the most important. It serves as a sacrament, sign, and servant of God’s SCRM. 1.1         The Bible as the Living Word of God The SCRM God communicates himself and his will and way for us in the Bible. “Jesus Christ as he is attested in Holy Scripture is the one Word of God whom we have to hear, and whom we have to trust and obey in life and in death.” [1] So claims the remarkable Theological Declaration of Barmen written by the Confessing Church as a witness against the Nazi regime in Germany in 1934. “As he is attested in Holy Scripture” – the Jesus we find in the pages of the New Testament witnesses to the ...